


Nightmares

by brunettachoppa687, TTICSY (phantomofthefandoms)



Series: The Things I Could Show You [22]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 03:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3921058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brunettachoppa687/pseuds/brunettachoppa687, https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomofthefandoms/pseuds/TTICSY
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny still has nightmares about the portal accident that changed him, but now he has Vlad to sooth them away.  However, after what Danny tells him, the man begins to wonder if he should be more concerned...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

It was dark.  That was always the first thing Danny remembered.  Dark and cold…

And the whispers.

To this day, Tucker and Sam believed that they were the ones who convinced him to put on that jumpsuit and enter the portal.  But they weren’t, not really.  No, the first ones to convince to enter the portal had been the whispers.  They came not long after his parents constructed the cursed thing, faint and cloyingly sweet, creeping through his ears and whispering so softly in his head.

_“Come…  Come…”_

_“We’re so lonely… won’t you join us?”_

_“You’re lonely too…”_

_“Come…”_

_**“COME…”** _

The whispers had been so strong that day…

When he finally did step into that portal, he almost threw himself back out of it when the voices reached a high, screaming pitch.  He stumbled, nearly fell…

And his hand brushed against the power switch while he was still inside.

Then it wasn’t dark or cold anymore.  No, now it was bright, blinding, burning into his retinas, his BRAIN.  Burning through his body and his blood like lightning, his screams silent to his own ears, unable to rise above the roar of the HOWLS of the DAMNED.

He was being torn apart!  Piece by piece, so slowly and yet so quickly!  It hurt, it HURT!  He was being torn apart and ripped to shreds and broken down till there was nearly nothing left–

Make it stop!

Make it STOP!

It hurts it hurts make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STOP!!

“AAAHHHHH!!!”

Another voice joined the hoard, cutting through the rest.  “–anny?!” it cried.

“DANNY!!”

Danny jack knifed up in the large bed, wails dying on his lips and morphing into fearful sobs.  Sweat rolled down his heated skin, plastering his long dark hair to his forehead and his neck and shoulders.  Tears clung to his lashes and his chest heaved for breath, gasping past his sobs…

Vlad immediately grabbed Danny to his chest, tucking the boy’s head into his shoulder.  “My little badger…!” he whispered, voice breaking.  “You were screaming!  What’s wrong…?”

Danny shuddered, taking in gasping breaths while he clung to Vlad like a lifeline.  “P-p-portal…”

“Oh no…”

The older halfa clutched him closer, stroking his hair as he murmured quiet reassurances into his hair.  “It’s okay now, baby boy, it’s alright…” he whispered.  “It’s all over now, it’s not going to hurt you…”

Danny hiccuped, his sobs making him lose his breath.  “Something… something had BEEN there.  It KNEW!”

“What?”

“There were… these WHISPERS.  Telling me to come, that it was lonely, that it knew I was lonely too and…  and…”

Danny shuddered, frightened and tired and shuddering with remembered pain.  “It was there… It was WATCHING ME… its voice.. sweet and encouraging and… HOWLING…”

Vlad’s brows furrowed.  “A voice?”

He cast his mind back to his own accident – his own transformation – trying to recall some sort of voice and failing.  Delirium was always an explanation, but for Danny, it sounded like these whispers came before the delirium could have even set in, before he stepped into the portal.  Many ghosts could give impressions of things, but whispering?  Psychically?  Only incredibly powerful spirits could do that, and even then they would have to have a powerful connection to the living person…

“Did you know this voice, perhaps?” the older halfa murmured, still stroking Danny’s hair.  “Or did it seem familiar?  Maybe it was an old family member of yours…”

“No…” Danny whimpered.  “I didn’t like it.  It frightened me.  It… It sounded like a child but not… one minute it will be sweet and beckoning and the next…. Dark, deep, angry… switching between demanding I obey and… and LURING me…”

The dark-haired boy slumped into Vlad’s hold.  “I haven’t heard the voice since…” he admitted.  “But it was there…”

Danny’s eyes glazed over as he thought back on it, the memory of his transformation, his rebirth.  

“I know it was there…”

~*~*~

Nearly three years ago, a shutter clicked in the basement lab of Fentonworks.  

The flash temporarily blinded a 16-year old Danny.  He rubbed his eyes and glanced nervously back at the unfinished Ghost Portal, still blinking spots from his vision.  “Okay, we got the picture,” he muttered.  “Can we go now?  My…”

An echoing childish voice – like a happy little boy – rang around the lab.   _“So close~!  Come~”_

“… M-My parents will be home any second…” Danny struggled to say over the whispers that neither Tucker nor Sam seemed to hear.

_“We know you won’t fail us…”_

Danny felt goosebumps ripple up his spine… like an invisible hand brushing his neck, but it didn’t feel like a child’s hand.  For the last week, these quiet whispers had been filling his mind, and no one else seemed to hear them.  He didn’t want anyone to think he was crazy, though, so he TRIED to keep it to himself… but he was reaching his limit…

“P-Plus, they don’t like anyone being down here!” Danny claimed.  “It’s not finished yet!”

Sam looked up at the jumble of wires and steel excitedly.  “C’mon, Danny, a Ghost Portal?” she enthused, glancing at him.  “You GOTTA check it out~”

“I-I don’t know, Sam…”

But his worries went unheard as she pushed a jumpsuit in his hands.  Before he knew what was happening, he was suited up and standing outside the portal.

“Just go inside and let me take a picture!”

“O-one picture, right?”

“Of course!”

Danny approached the portal, hesitating for a moment.

_“Come on~!  Almost there~!  You won’t be lonely anymore~”_

As Danny stepped into the portal, the childlike voice suddenly dropped, becoming something dark and deep and sinister.

_“Never again… We **PROMISE**.”_

Laughter suddenly filled Danny’s ears, echoing all around him inside the portal, howls and laughter and–!

//Need to get out!  Need to get out right now!//

He took a step back in fright, tripping over his own feet, his hand coming up to catch himself–!

Then his world lit up blazing green, and the howls filled his head.  Danny felt his body injected with white fire and shredded apart – piece by piece – as the inhuman roars of an unholy triumph ripped through his mind.  For an instant, he felt what this thing had accomplished!  It had put a piece into place, one that couldn’t be reversed!

In that moment, Danny’s eyes – blazing green and burning with pain – opened with shock into the blinding light.

He saw a figure.

A silhouette, a shadow… so enormous it could easily crush a bear’s head with one hand.  Its shoulders were broad, its hair long and aflame at the tips, and its great head was tipped back in laughter, crowned with a magnificent set of horns that curved into a perfect circle – conjoining at their peaks.  Long claws, a fluttering cape… One eye glowed like blood, and the other like ectoplasm…

The next thing Danny would know was waking up on the floor of the lab… his eyes shimmering that same ghastly green.

~*~*~

“I don’t know who… or WHAT it was…”  Danny breathed, shaking in Vlad’s grasp.  “But it was there, I KNOW it was there…  It had to be there…  Had to be real…”

He shook his head, hiding his face in Vlad’s neck.  “God… am I going crazy?”

Vlad swallowed, and only strengthened his hold on Danny, burying his face in his hair.  “No…” he murmured.  “No, I don’t think you are… But I do believe you are in danger…”

“D-Danger?”

Vlad nodded – trying to conceal the fact that he, too, had goosebumps.  “Yes… Only incredibly powerful spirits can speak with humans across dimensions… and if you SAW him there, that means he knew where the Fenton portal would open.  He knew what would happen and he knew where you would be…”

He stroked Danny’s cheek.  “Are you sure you’ve never seen this creature again?  Or heard tell of him?  A picture in a wall, in a book, a passing picture, anything?”

“N-no…”  Danny breathed, clinging to Vlad all the tighter and burying his face in the man’s long silver hair.  “I never saw, or heard it again… I think… I think it had no reason to stick around any longer…”

His voice grew solemn, eyes distant and lost.  “It got what it wanted…”


End file.
